Molecular diagnostic assays for COVID-19: an overview

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the cardinal importance of rapid and accurate diagnostic assays. Since the early days of the outbreak, researchers with different scientific backgrounds across the globe have tried to fulfill the urgent need for such assays, with many assays having been approved and with others still undergoing clinical validation. Molecular diagnostic assays are a major group of tests used to diagnose COVID-19. Currently, the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is the most widely used method. Other diagnostic molecular methods, including CRISPR-based assays, isothermal nucleic acid amplification methods, digital PCR, microarray assays, and next generation sequencing (NGS), are promising alternatives. In this review, we summarize the technical and clinical applications of the different COVID-19 molecular diagnostic assays and suggest directions for the implementation of such technologies in future infectious disease outbreaks.

Comparative study of different SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic techniques

“…Microarray assays have showed good results with previous coronavirus ( Habibzadeh et al, 2021 ). No data are available with CLART®COVID-19 microarrays but CLART technology had been successfully used for detection of other respiratory viruses ( Ferreira et al, 2020 ; Silva et al, 2019 ).…”

Laboratory Diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 Pneumonia

“…Disadvantages of PCR testing include the need for specialized and costly reagents, expensive laboratory instrumentation, and highly skilled laboratory personnel. Processing large numbers of specimens is time-consuming and even with automation of many processing steps can take a prolonged period of time to generate results [ 75 , 76 ]. One major limitation of RT-PCR methods is that the tests are overly sensitive and do not distinguish between active infection and non-viable virus [ 76 ].…”

Rapid and accurate clinical testing for COVID-19 by nicking and extension chain reaction system-based amplification (NESBA)

“…This technique is very rapid, simple, and cost-effective, but can not very effectively diagnose the patients with low viral titers and may lead to false-negative results, due to low sensitivity ( Liu and Rusling, 2021 ; Mak et al, 2020 ). Therefore, the direct antigen testing is used only for first screening where the qRT-PCR is not feasible and the qRT-PCR is normally recommended for the confirmation of COVID-19 cases ( Habibzadeh et al, 2021 ; Lee et al, 2020 ; Peeling et al, 2021 ).…”